Belly of the Beast
After leaving the pit, the group headed back to the nearby village to see the three snake sister mercenaries they met in the capital were in town. Dolan and Koritha spotted them and went over to say hi. After a brief encounter Koritha let slip that the group had managed to acquire the silver serpent and Dolan showed them the writing from the pillar it had been on. Meska-tet, the quiet snake sister, translated the writing and told them what it meant. Upon learning this, Helena said that she’d deal with the devourer when it showed up and she didn’t want to worry about it till then. With no leads on how to find the devourer the group asked the snake sisters if they had any leads. The sisters said that several other groups were heading to the Ettin’s jaw, a landmark in Talor, the country just north of them. On the way through the forest bordering the two countries the group was ambushed and attacked by a band of Orcs. The orcs were quickly dispatched, but not before Baqir took a good thrashing and turned the fallen orcs into goo. Palar and Koritha stayed behind to perform burial rites on the fallen orcs before the group headed the rest of the way north. Once they reached the Ettin’s jaw they saw it was a cave set into the side of a cliff with tall stones evenly spaced in a half circle around it. The group entered and Koritha noticed a trapped stair in the hallway leading down. Dolan stepped to the front to disable the trap but ended up setting it off by accident. A giant upper jaw fell shut over the entrance of the cave, trapping everyone but Vessel inside. Now trapped, the group headed deeper inside to find a large circular room with a basin in the center attached to a chain leading into the ceiling. Inside the room were three fallen adventurers who looked to have starved to death inside not but a week ago. Helena took an unidentified wand from one of them and Dolan took a set of Boots of elven kind from another. After thoroughly searching the room, the group found a spout in the ceiling that they turned on. It began to trickle water into the large basin in the center of the room that was attached to a chain. They figured that this chain must be attached to the jaw that fell closed to trap them in. At its current rate it would take several months to fill the basin, so Koritha and Helena used their cleric spells to create water and food for the group and try to fill the basin more quickly, but it would still take a week or so. Dolan disabled the trapped stair to make sure it wouldn’t go off again later and the group sat in the chamber for almost two weeks. They told Vessel to try to find another water source as she was still outside. They took Palar’s bag of holding and told her to fill it with water and return with it, but she was late. She came back nine hour later bleeding profusely. Dolan saw her crawling from between the teeth of the trap and called for Koritha. Vessel had been attacked by another mercenary group and had let the spirit that possessed her called Spta-kem out to defeat her enemies, but it exiting her left her wounded. Koritha healed her and the group agreed it would be best to keep her near the jaw from then on. A few more days passed and Palar kept a regimented schedule of training, working out and reading aloud from his small collection of books to the rest of the group to try to keep from losing their minds from boredom. Helena was about ready to explode by the time the jaw finally budged. Palar tried to use his fortress to knock the jaw open but it didn’t work. The basin finally filled enough that Koritha and Palar were able to pull on the chain and pull the jaw open. Midway down the chain, was a set of links made of different material. This was the second artifact, the loadstone chain. Palar used his fortress to prop the jaw open and cut the loadstone chain from the main chain. Now with two of the four artifacts the group headed south to meet up with Artemis. But the snake sisters decided to go looking for Septa-kem and the two groups parted ways.